Your story reminds me of a similar encounter that I had sometime around 2006. My kids were then ages 5 and 3. We were in a restaurant waiting to be seated and there was a teen girl nearby with multiple facial piercings, tattoos and unnaturally colored hair. At the time, such a sight was not as common as it is now. My 5 year old daughter asked me what was wrong with the girl (even a 5 year old in 2006 recognized that something was “wrong” with this girl). I immediately responded that the girl hated her mother or perhaps both parents and that physically hurting herself by branding herself this way was her way of also hurting her parents. Both kids were very interested in this response and asked lots of questions. They are both in college now and they both still bring up this story. What’s more, they tell me that I was right - the people around them who look like this are generally among the lot suffering from some “mental issue”, have issues with their parents and are strange.
Your story reminds me of a similar encounter that I had sometime around 2006. My kids were then ages 5 and 3. We were in a restaurant waiting to be seated and there was a teen girl nearby with multiple facial piercings, tattoos and unnaturally colored hair. At the time, such a sight was not as common as it is now. My 5 year old daughter asked me what was wrong with the girl (even a 5 year old in 2006 recognized that something was “wrong” with this girl). I immediately responded that the girl hated her mother or perhaps both parents and that physically hurting herself by branding herself this way was her way of also hurting her parents. Both kids were very interested in this response and asked lots of questions. They are both in college now and they both still bring up this story. What’s more, they tell me that I was right - the people around them who look like this are generally among the lot suffering from some “mental issue”, have issues with their parents and are strange.